𝐍𝐎𝐍-𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒

I think I did something terrible to your body

He knocked three times on my door before it crept open a couple of inches. The sunlight penetrating the darkness of my apartment through the crack of the door hurt my eyes.

"Hi", he said.

He stepped in, I stepped back.

He looked around. The lights were off. The sun dimly lit the room from the little holes in the shutters. When he glanced at me I stared at him with no emotions. I could see he was pissed, but as his eyes met mine, his serious face softened a little.

"You didn't answer my calls", he said, analyzing the distance that separated us, noticing I stood a bit further from him than what I used to.

"I'm sorry."

"You didn't answer my calls for two days."

"I'm really sorry", and it was sincere and honest.

He looked at me, confused and sad. "Please, tell me what changed."

I stared at my hands for a very long time before looking at him again. I had no emotions left. The last couple of days I've been terrified. Now I just felt defeated. There was the man I loved in front of me. But nothing, I felt nothing. Nothing at all. 

"Ari", he spoke softy and took a small step towards me. Instinctively, I took another step backwards. "What happened, Ari?", he asked gently.

"I haven't had my period this month", I whispered.

He stared at me, blinking a couple of times.

"I took a test. I took four, actually."

He opened his mouth and confusedly tried to articulate the question "and?". His voice cracked on the last letter, then there was a sigh, a raised eyebrow, a glimmer of surprise, fear, hope. "Are you...", he asked hesitantly.

I looked in his eyes and nodded.

"Fuck sake", he groaned.

Many emotions ran through his face. I watched them chase each other while my gaze was fixed, my breathing was regular, and my heart was beating the way it always used to. I watched his emotions chasing each other over his face while I felt nothing. Whatever he was feeling right now was not what I had felt when I found out. That revealed a lot about what we wanted from life. Certainly not the same things. Maybe that is why I cried so much in the past two days. I already knew Matty and I had chosen different paths in life. For a while, I just pretended I couldn't see it. But the signs were clear, and now everything was transparent. There was nothing to cry about or to hope for. That was where we parted ways.

"Why didn't you tell me before?", he asked, raising his voice significantly, not with anger, just letting his uncontainable emotions come out of his lips. He added another step forward, towards me. I added another step backwards.

"I was scared", I simply replied.

"Of my reaction?"

"Of everything."

Matty looked at me with worry lacing his features. Then he rubbed his face with his hands. He looked up, searching for an answer from Jesus, or who knows. I guess he was trying to get his head around it all. His emotions overflew from his face as they could shatter his cheekbones. I thought I saw him smile. He glanced at me again, with a strange look in his eyes. He stared at my body like it was already something else, as if he could see, beyond my fragile bones, the prelude to a swelling that would bear his signature.

"Bring it on", he whispered calmly, with a touch of pleading.

"What?"

"I said bring it on. Logistically, it'll probably be a bit of a nightmare, but we can sort it out", he added hopeful, a tiny grin on his lips.